Long nomination battle instills election worries

President Carter and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy had been sharp adversaries with a bad history, and in the 1980 presidential campaign, they let it bleed into a bitter nomination fight.

The Carter administration challenged Kennedy's patriotism and refused to debate, while Kennedy dragged out their fight for nine months, all the way to the Democratic convention. A weakened Carter prevailed and won the nomination, but he went on to lose in November.

Convention fights often spell ruin for a party. The 1980 experience for Democrats -- as well as a fight in 1968, and one in 1976 for Republicans -- all suggest that a bruising primary carried through the summer can contribute to defeat in November.

Today, nervous Democrats are worried that history will repeat itself as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who lags in delegates and the popular vote, has refused to concede the nomination to Sen. Barack Obama. Despite the increasing rancor of the campaign, Clinton says she is staying in until the voting is over.

Former President Clinton reinforced that point Sunday.

"There is somehow the suggestion that because we are having a vigorous debate about who would be the best president, we are going to weaken this party in the fall," Clinton said. "Chill out."

For all the sirens warning of disaster, history offers mixed guidance on whether spirited primary fights are fatal. Many historians and analysts say that while protracted primaries can weaken a nominee, bigger factors are usually at play. Voters are often swayed by whether they feel the country is headed in the right direction. They take into account whether primary battles are personal or political. They want to see whether the winner and the loser can patch things up. And time can make a difference.

No one, however, really knows where the tipping point is and whether this year's Democratic nominee will be too damaged to fend off Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee.

"There are interesting patterns of convention fights weakening the parties going into the election," said Ted Widmer, a presidential historian at Brown. "But I don't think that's going to happen this year. All the issues favor the Democrats. There's a wobbly economy, the war in Iraq and huge numbers of Democrats are ready to go vote for anyone but the Republican nominee. It would take considerable effort by the Democratic Party to lose this election."

In the case of Carter, many analysts say he would have lost anyway, even without a primary fight.

Still, it could not have helped Carter that a prominent member of his own party took him on, or that Kennedy left the convention with a defiant vow that "the dream shall never die." Robert Shrum, a longtime Democratic operative who wrote that speech for Kennedy, said a bitter extended primary challenge in itself did not doom the outcome.

"It's not the going to the convention, it's how sulfurous and negative this gets," Shrum said of the Clinton-Obama battle.

"We could have a situation where we set gender and race against each other, and we could lose the unlosable election in the bonfire of the vanities," Shrum said.

Some Democrats fear just such a trajectory.

"This contest will get even more contentious, and there will be more charges and countercharges," Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's campaign in 2000 and is neutral in this race.

"People were excited; now they're exhausted," Brazile said.

A Gallup poll last week found that as of March, 28 percent of Clinton backers would vote for McCain over Obama, and 19 percent of Obama supporters would vote for McCain over Clinton.

But in the Republican primary in 2000, more than half of those who originally supported McCain said they would vote for Gore over George W. Bush in the fall, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. By November, about 30 percent of those potential defectors had returned to the party fold, said Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at American University.

That year, Bush had seven months to unite his party. If the Democrats fight through their convention, in late August, they would have just two months.

"The earlier they wrap it up, the more likely they are to bring people back into the party for the fall," Schaffner said. "But I don't think you'll see as many defections as in 2000 because we're more polarized than we were in 2000."

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